LEVERAGING BLOCKCHAIN TO TRANSITION SOCIAL MEDIA FROM CENTRALIZED TO DECENTRALIZED MODELS

Abstract

Blockchain is having an impact on social media platforms because it promises to address today's most pressing problems, including content moderation and privacy issues, and it can offer a decentralized system for social media platform management using distributed structures and cryptographic techniques. Since there are more risks, such as identity theft and fake news spreading throughout these systems, social media systems are typically built on central architectures that may help address platform accountability and data privacy issues in an indirect manner. Blockchain has emerged as an anticentralized platform that enables numerous users to conduct authentic and safe P2P transactions without the need for an intermediary. In this survey, we give a systematic analysis of the related field and provide a quick summary of the most recent developments in blockchain protocols and their interactions with social media platforms. We specifically examine and expound upon the use case of blockchain's application to a variety of social media services, including content moderation platforms based on smart contracts, token economics-based user incentives, social media governance through decentralized autonomous organizations, and cross-chain relationships. We then go one step further and provide an extensive literature assessment of blockchain that includes the primary social media applications that cut across them, such as self-governance, tokenization, and identity. We outline the current problems in the sector, such as scalability and adherence to current regulations, and recommend potential research directions in this constantly changing topic as we wrap up this survey.